She's Not A Stranger To The Dark
by The Other Jet Engine
Summary: Lyanna "Ripslinger" Slinger, professional air racer. But there's one thing she'd dreamed of since childhood more than racing. Espionage. (Humanized/Genderbend AU) More information in story.


**For anybody wondering...**

 **Yes, this is inspired by Stydealized's fic Nothing's Gonna Stop Her Now. I'm gonna borrow some dialogue for that one, plz understand!**

 **Yes, this is humanized.**

 **Yes, this is a genderbend, but Dusty and Ripslinger only(mention of Lightning and Jackson genderbend later).**

 **Yes, there will be some events added in or changed to match da story.**

 **Yes. the title is taken from Keala Settle's This Is Me.**

 **Yes, this will be my first(and only) Dusty X Ishani fanfic, though it's only background. I would ship it if Dusty was a girl.**

* * *

Lyanna Slinger wanted to be a secret agent since she first watched Kira Hurricane:Air Hero when she was 10, then her dreams quickly evolved, wanting a whole mess of fancy gadgets. And now she was 16, everybody kept saying she should become an air racer. Unbeknownst to anybody in Propwash, she kept practicing her agent skills at a small waterfall in a forest and made her own gadgets out of stolen parts.

It wasn't until 10-year-old Dusti Crophopper found out that secret.

She was just looking at the falls, until a gentle hand was placed on her shoulder. "'Sup?" it said. Dusti quickly turned around to see a veiled figure. "What are you doing in my secret base?" it said.

"I...I'm just..." Dusti stammered.

The figure pulled the veil off her face to reveal Lyanna Slinger, the coolest girl in town. "This is where I practice my agent skills." she said, pointing at the falls and then a little cabin she made right next to them, the place where she kept all her gadgets.

"Cool!" said Dusti. "I have a dream too. If they want somebody to become an air racer, that should be me!"

"Alright!" Lyanna exclaimed. "Let's meet again someday, as the best secret agent and air racer in da whole world! Pinky promise!"

* * *

 _10 years later_

"Ladies and gentlemen," A loud male voice proclaimed over a headset, "May we have your attention, pleeeeeeeeeassssseeeeeeeeee?" The owner of da voice was a young man with dark brown hair, dressed in a green and white uniform, next to another man who was looking almost identical, except the colors on his uniform were swapped. Likely identical twins. "Time to direct your eyes to da heavens above and give a warm welcome to our special guest, The Princess Of Propellers..."

All eyes directed to a black and green Racing Mustang with orange flame details flying in a loop with bright green smoke trailing behind her.

"When she's speeding, she's leading."

The pilot angled her plane towards the snapping paparazzi. "Get my good side, fellas!"

"When she's grinning, she's winning."

With another twist, she landed on the runway and through her cloud of green smoke emerged—

"Da one and only..." The two twins joined together. The plane's windshield opened to reveal a 26-year-old woman with slightly tanned skin, wavy black hair and brilliant jade eyes stepped out, with a smirk that could rival Chick Hicks.

"RIPSLINGER!" At that moment, she tossed her head back to da cameras as the fireworks went off from behind her.

"Caught in da riptide! Thanks for coming here today! Who wants a picture?" The three were completely ignored as da smoke cleared and Ripslinger went off to sign autographs with her cronies. Her plane was being tugged back to her sponsor tent.

"Well, with all that self-promotion, at least she's _modest._ " Dottie coughed in disgust and with a lack of impressment, she waved da smoke away.

"Dottie, that's Ripslinger!" Dusti looked more pumped up then ever to start racing. She probably wanted to impress Ripslinger. Not for romance, but more in the way a sidekick wanted to make their hero proud of 'em.

Chug picked up where his friend started. "She's captain of da Team RPX. They call her..."

"Da Green Tornado!" The two fangirled/fanboyed at da same time, causing their other friend to roll her eyes. And that was when realization struck. Dusti immediately knew that she should've recognized that lady...but she just couldn't put her hand on it.

* * *

After getting all that coaching from Skipper Riley, Dusti decided to finally take to da sky. "Wow! Bulldog?" The middle-aged man sitting there and drinking a cup of Earl Grey had dark brown hair streaked with grey and matching eyes without the grey, wearing a uniform that resembled da Union Jack uncannily. Behind him was his plane, a blue De Haviland DH.88 Comet with a white underside, red wings and landing gear, and da Union Jack also printed on da hood. "From da European Cup, The Big Dog! Hey, I saw you do this unbelievable high G-vertical turn. How'd you do that?" Dusti knew that Bulldog wasn't gonna tell everything to her, but...you lose a lotta common sense when you're in front of a star.

"Ooh, girl, lemme tell you, in fact..." He took a sip of his tea. "Why don't I tell you all of my racing secrets?" That tone he spoke in was a false one, dripping with sarcasm. Dusti frowned at this. Did he REALLY have to be this rude?

"Look," he continued, "I don't know how things work from da backwater from which you hail, but this is a competition. Every racer for himself!"

"Fine, if you don't want my company, you can just say so." She grumbled and stormed off, but if she'd bothered to look back, she would have seen Bulldog suddenly give a double take and whip out a picture of somebody. Somebody very close to the older racer.

Dusti couldn't believe her luck. First Ripslinger, now Bulldog. Were all racers gonna be like this?

Her question was soon answered as she accidentally tripped over a loose cable and went tumbling down onto a pile of cans, their labels unrecognizable to the girl. "Ohmigosh, are you OK?" A hand grabbed her and helped her to her feet. Luckily, nothing hurt. If worse, a little bruised.

"Yeah, thanks, actually..." Dusti cut herself off when she saw who helped her up. A pretty young woman, some years older than herself with long black hair tied in a ponytail, dark skin and startling green eyes. Her uniform was a gradient from yellow at the top, fading to red at the bottom and decorated with colorful purple and green flowers. Her plane was a modified AeroCanard FG model with da same color palette, as she could see from her tent just feet away from them. "Wowzers! You're Ishani, right? Pan-Asian Champion and Mumbai cup record holder?" Ishani was by far, one of Dusti's biggest heroes ever since she came onto da scene. Dusti was around 10 or 11 by that time. Being only one of three female racers, Ishani was the one who inspired Dusti to find her passion and dream for racing. She'd always dream of seeing her in person. And right now, it was getting real hard to not squeal or raise her voice.

"Yeah, but most people call me just Ishani." The older woman giggled politely at the young adult. The ginger sure seemed eager to race and ishani was always up for a new challenger.

"I'm Dusti, with an I. I hope we can talk more before the bout tomorrow."

"It's very nice to meet you too." She gave a wave to the younger woman before leaving back to her tent.

"She's awesome..."

"Well, well, well, look who made it." A sharp tone made her jump and turn around to find that sleaze ball Ripslinger right behind her. Not a nice one, but a smile. "The farm gal with her crop duster." Dusti didn't say a thing, but avoided her gaze down at her. It didn't help that she towered a whole half a head around her. "Y'know, what you have here is a nice interest story. Small town farm girl makes it to da big time." She paused a bit before leaning down closer to Dusti's ear. "But tragically crashes on takeoff. By the way...you remind me of somebody back home. She wanted to be an air racer too, and looked just like you. Her name was Dusti Crophopper."

"Well, you remind _me_ of somebody back home." Dusti retaliated, despite the fact that she was surprised there was another Dusti Crophopper. "She looked just like you too, and she had a plane called Ripslinger like my plane is called Strut. But thank goodness, she's nothing like you, and she might be a secret agent by now! Her name was Lyanna Slinger."

Realization then hit the two in da face, and their eyes skimmed over each other in amazement.

"Lyanna?" Dusti finally spoke.

"Dusti?" Ripslinger gasped.

* * *

"But...what are you doing here?" asked Dusti. "Aren't you supposed to be somewhere out there _spying_?"

"Remember the day we made our pinky promise?" Rip said. "That night, my custodian...he discovered my secret base. Destroyed all my gadgets. Pushed me into air racing. I quickly grew into a worldwide sensation and I love the whole deal, but I still wanna go spying. On the other hand...I'm so sorry! I should have recognized you earlier! If only I could take back all those terrible things I said..."

"Don't worry." the younger woman said. "Someday, something **big** will happen and it will give you the opportunity to go spying."

 _4 Years Later_

Ripslinger was annoyed by Next-Gen Piston Cup racer Jacqueline Storm's constant revering of old legend Lyra "Lightning" McQueen, so she recorded all of Jackie's high praises of Lyra and delivered it to said red racer through Cruz Ramirez. Little did she know this event would make chaos erupt over da whole world.

Turns out Racing Sports Network statistician Natalie Certain was Natalie Axlerod, the long-lost daughter of Sir Miles Axlerod, the leader of the Lemon Car Terrorists. CIA sent an agent to stop her evil schemes, but said agent was attacked by lemon planes and fell to his death and Rip was mistaken for him. It was definitely something **big.**

She was having a conversation with Siddeley, Bulldog's acquaintance and a spy plane pilot. "I love your propellers." he said, playing with the Sky Slycers until he cut his hand. "OW!"

"Careful." Ripslinger told him. "That's why they call 'em Sky Slycers."

"I still love them." said Sid.

"Thank you." she replied. "Your jet engines are good too. With even one of those doohickeys, I would easily win a race without cheating!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh, never mind."

"Alright. Anyway...You look a little light on weapons." And with that, Siddeley presented Ripslinger with a ton of fancy gadgets, the ones she always dreamed of.

* * *

"Jet engines! JET ENGINES!" Ripslinger yelled as she flew at unbelievably high speeds through the clouds. Now that the bomb was on her plane, she needed to find Natalie Certain—fast!

 _LATER..._

""What if"? You're basing this on a "what if"!?" yelled Natalie.

"Okay, that's it! Lads, clear out!" said a security guard.

"Wait, somebody save me! The lady's crazy! Keep away, you idiot!"

" _RIPSLINGER_ _?!_ " yelled Finn McMissile.

"Rip!" yelled Siddeley.

"Somebody, do something!" cried Natalie. Then she said, "You're insane, you are! DEACTIVATE!"

" _Bomb deactivated. Have a nice day, Miss Axlerod._ " said the bomb computer. Rip opened the hood of Natalie's car, revealing the V8 engine.

* * *

They were having a Wings Around Propwash Junction rally. Everybody was here, including Jackie and Lyra, who were now a couple. Ned and Zed had found girlfriends too—twin sisters named Mia and Tia.

"Her Majesty asked for you personally, _Ripslinger K_." Finn told her.

"But I told y'all before, I'm not a spy." she told him back. "I'm a racer. Just leave me alone."

"We know." said Siddeley.

"If there's ever anything I can do for you, just let me know." said Finn.

"Well, I sure appreciate that, thank you. Actually, there is _one_ thing..."

* * *

"Impossible!" cried El Chupacabra, the Mexican.

"Lyanna?!" Dusti cried.

"Check it out! They let me keep da rockets." said Rip.

"I'll see ya at da finish line, Ripstinker!" said Dusti, and then zoomed right past her.

"Not if I get there first, farm girl!" Rip said playfully, then jetted off after Strut with a "Yippee!"


End file.
